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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

MURSITPINAR, Turkey – A group of
Syrian rebels entered the embattled border town of Kobani from Turkey
on Wednesday on a mission to help Kurdish fighters battling Islamic
State extremists in Syria, activists and Kurdish officials said.

The group of around 200 armed men is from the Free Syrian Army, and
it's separate from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were also en
route Wednesday to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said the FSA group
crossed to Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey.
Nassan, who spoke in Mursitpinar, said they travelled in cars but did
not have more details.

The FSA is an umbrella group of mainstream rebels fighting to topple
Syrian President Bashar Assad. The political leadership of the
Western-backed FSA is based in Turkey, where fighters often seek respite
from the fighting.

The 150 Iraqi peshmerga troops arrived in Turkey from Iraq early on
Wednesday and were expected to cross into Syria later in the day. Their
deployment came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga troops to
cross into Syria via Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the BBC that sending the
peshmerga and the Free Syrian Army was "the only way to help Kobani,
since other countries don't want to use ground troops."

A Kurdish journalist in Kobani and the Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed that a group of about 50 FSA
fighters entered Kobani Wednesday.

After a rousing send-off from thousands of cheering, flag-waving
supporters in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil, the peshmerga forces
landed early Wednesday at the Sanliurfa airport in southeastern Turkey.
They left the airport in buses escorted by Turkish security forces and
were expected to travel to Kobani also through Mursitpinar crossing.

The Islamic State group launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby
Syrian villages in mid-September, killing more than 800 people,
according to activists. The Islamic State extremists captured dozens of Kurdish
villages around Kobani and control parts of the town. More than 200,000
people have fled across the border into Turkey.

The U.S. is leading a coalition that has carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting the militants in and around Kobani.

The deployment of the 150 peshmerga fighters, who were authorized by
the Iraqi Kurdish government to go to Kobani, underscores the sensitive
political tensions in the region.Turkey's government views the Syrian Kurds defending Kobani as loyal
to what Ankara regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party,
or PKK.

That group has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is
designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and NATO.

Under pressure to take greater action against the IS militants — from
the West as well as from Kurds inside Turkey and Syria — the Turkish
government agreed to let the fighters cross through its territory. But
it only is allowing the peshmerga forces from Iraq, with whom it has a
good relationship, and not those from the PKK.

The force will provide much-needed support for the Syrian Kurds,
although it is not clear whether Turkey will allow the peshmerga
fighters to carry enough weaponry to make an impact.